


there’s magic in your veins (can i have a taste?)

by C_AND_B



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, F/F, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:54:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28509255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/C_AND_B/pseuds/C_AND_B
Summary: magic really was all around. but kara thinks its particularly prominent in the store next door where lena resides – messing with magic she shouldn’t and being generally bewitching
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 94
Kudos: 807





	there’s magic in your veins (can i have a taste?)

**Author's Note:**

> there is just enough plot here to drive the gay content, and just little enough for my braincells to remain dormant, so enjoy that, and enjoy the noncommittal references to a bunch of different kinds of magic and magical works (and hopefully enjoy 2021 but who dafuq knows at this point)

“Care to tell me how Mr Wallace walked into the apothecary for a sleeping draught today?”

Lena’s hands halt briefly in their task, a flask stopping halfway to the shelf for a second before Lena keeps moving, nonchalantly picking another out of the box in her arms and following the same motion, apparently refusing to look Kara’s way. “I imagine with his legs?”

“The legs that were devoid of life last week when he died in the middle of my healing ritual?” Kara asks. She remembers the moment vividly. The moment she realised there was nothing more she could do for him. Nothing more beyond a level of magic she swore she wouldn’t touch.

Lena doesn’t falter, doesn’t look her way still. “Those would probably be the ones, yes.”

“The legs that you specifically told me you wouldn’t bring back to life because you were swearing off necromancy on account of your brother?”

Lena spins abruptly to face her. Her eyes as pleading for understanding as her words. “His wife was sobbing on my doorstep,” she argues and its like all the fight drains out of Kara at once.

All the arguments she had about Lena not drawing attention to herself and Lena wasting energy she might need at a moment’s notice and Lena sacrificing herself over and over because she thinks she needs to make up for the horrible things her brother did to the people of this town and beyond.

(Kara thinks Lena doesn’t owe anyone anything.

She thinks getting to exist at the same time as her is more than enough of an offering to make her forever even with the universe and all that’s in it).

“For a self-proclaimed hardass, you sure are the softest person I’ve ever met.” Kara hadn’t expected it when they first met, when she first stumbled into Lena’s store to welcome her to the neighbourhood and was met with a warm room and a cold shoulder.

But she knew there was something. She pushed until there was anything. And now Lena was everything. She was the thing always lingering on Kara’s mind, the thing she yearned to see from the moment she woke up, the thing she smiled about for no reason, the thing she longed for more than anything else, the thing she was terrified she’d never have as wholly as she wanted.

And she was the prettiest thing Kara had ever seen, especially as she scoffs and settles her shoulders in a proud, defensive stance. “I raised a man from the dead, that’s not soft.”

“You’re very talented in your softness,” Kara allows. She’s not going to budge any more than that though and she knows Lena recognises that too as she huffs and drops her box to the counter.

“Just move out of the way of the door so I can lock up for lunch,” she says, and then pauses a little self-consciously like she often does, like she’s making sure Kara still wants this, making sure Kara still cares. Kara wished she’d realised she could never stop now. “I presume that’s why you’re here?”

“Yes, ma’am. Someone has to make sure you eat, can’t necromance yourself.” Not that she doesn’t think Lena would be reckless enough to try and have some wild failsafe in place.

“We both know you could easily do the ritual.”

“I prefer to nurture fading life than grab it from the ethos and shove it back into the vessel,” she jokes, if only to get a rise, if only to shove down the part of her that screams she would do anything if Lena were the one whose life hung in the balance.

“Shove?” Lena repeats incredulously. It lacks a little credibility as she literally shoves Kara out the door of her shop, touchlessly flipping the sign to ‘out to lunch’ as she goes. “I have far more finesse than that. I _gently flirted_ the soul back into his body thank you very much.”

It’s Kara’s turn to be incredulous. “You can’t flirt to save your life.”

Lena cocks a brow. “You’ve never seen me flirt.”

“What about the woman who came in last week whispering with you over the counter?” Kara doesn’t mean for it to come out jealous, but it comes out a little jealous – she couldn’t really help it. Kara had spent the time aggressively staring at various jars on the shelves to stop the energy burning from her eyes – a side effect of a miss-mixed sun potion when she was first starting out, paired with a little too much power brewing beneath the surface that she didn’t often release.

“You mean the woman who came in pretending to care about my potions so that she could ask me questions about the cute blonde that she thought worked here?” Lena asks, laughing. “Yeah, I wouldn’t waste my time trying to flirt with her. Though you’ll have plenty of chances when she starts turning up in your shop every day – I told her your opening hours, hope you don’t mind.”

“Oh, well, that’s…” Kara reddens. “Maybe she should’ve bought a potion. I mean, clearly she’s out of her mind if she wasted a chance to flirt with you to ask about me.” Lena was, completely objectively speaking, the most attractive person to ever set foot on the ground. Kara would throw herself at Lena over the counter every day if she weren’t head over heels in love with her – and yes, she recognised how backwards that was.

“I’m already paying for lunch; you don’t have to butter me up.”

“Buttering you up is the best part of my day.” The resulting smile was at least. The way it curled past self-conscious, through charmingly endeared and landed on softly amused and flattered. Every smile of Lena’s was a journey and Kara was happy to take all the scenic routes along the way.

“Not the early morning heart attack from the appearance of previously deceased patients?”

“Close second,” Kara jokes. She sobers up quickly. “I really am just looking out for you, you know. I’d make no judgement about your practice at all if it weren’t for-“

“My murderous brother trying to hunt me down via my magic use so that he can drain me of my blood to use in some world ending ritual that he’s convinced himself is necessary to save the universe?” Lena fills in with an astutely accurate, no punches pulled answer.

“I wasn’t going to be so blunt about it but, yeah, that pretty much sums it up.” Lex Luthor was a man without boundaries, without allegiance, without a lick of sanity and Kara hated him in a way she’d never hated anyone before. “I worry about you.”

“It means a lot that you do,” Lena says earnestly. Kara’s heart slams earnestly in response when Lena gently touches the back of her hand and vows, “I promise to be more careful around widows.”

“I might start crying around you if it gets me what I want so easily.”

“I give you everything you want regardless.” Technically untrue. There was one thing Kara really wanted that Lena had never given, that she never expected her to give. Something that makes her entire face heat just by thinking about it.

“Lunch!” She shouts, thankful they’ve landed in their usual spot. She pushes the pull door about four times as Lena smiles at her general ridiculousness. The smile that Kara convinces herself is just for her. The one she’d embarrass herself ten times over to see for a single second. The one she thinks would probably revive her from the dead without all the other necromantic jazz.

(Not to be the cheesiest person alive.

But there was no magic like Lena Luthor).

* * *

Saturday morning was the best time to collect herbs. The sun always seemed a little brighter, the air a little fresher, the herbs a little more abundant. Saturday morning was the best time to collect herbs because it was the morning Lena let her latest disciples try hold down the fort by themselves and was finally free to come along.

Or, usually, she was. Kara’s a little worried today. A little curious about the way Lena’s shop stayed dark all throughout Friday, the way her messages were rare and sporadic and lacking their usual perfect punctuation and carefully chosen emojis.

She still knocks with her usual vigour (maybe a little harder than she means for it to be, maybe a little shakier than she’ll ever pay enough attention to for the sake of plausible deniability).

“Lena, open up! I know you’re awake – you’re always up before the sun. It’s one of the reasons half the street is convinced you’re one of the undead.” That and the fact that Lena was far too beautiful to be a normal witch. Well, maybe that for Kara, but it was probably mostly down to the circulating rumours about Lena’s parentage for everyone else.

The rumours about who really left a child on Lionel Luthor’s doorstep all those years ago. Lionel ‘late in life recluse on the hill’ Luthor who lived far longer than even someone with magical means should – someone who was maybe on good terms with Death because Death was sweet on him and the child they’d produced. Or so the neighbouring village kids told it (and some of the adults). Kara didn’t pay them too much mind. She had rumours of her own after all.

Lena whips the door open. Black framed glasses perched on her nose, hair in a messy bun, slight charring on her fingertips and a nervous look on her face like Kara was going to chew her out. Kara reserved the right to do so at any point in the upcoming conversation.

“What’ve you been messing with this time?” Lena doesn’t seem to even truly register the question.

“Time is a very funny thing,” she responds cryptically.

Kara wonders how she managed to find someone even more reckless than herself in this life. The chances seemed so low until she bumped into Lena. Or, rather, placed herself in her path because she couldn’t imagine the regret if she never took a chance and spoke to the cute new shopkeeper next door. “It’s also very dangerous.”

“Interesting though.”

Kara laughs at the slight restless twitch of Lena’s hands. “We’re going out.”

“Where?” Lena asks but she’s already grabbing her coat from the hook beside her door. Kara laughs and pats down her hair a little, pulls a handkerchief from her pocket and wipes a little mess from Lena’s cheek. She was still ethereal. Maybe even more so when she blushes softly and leans into Kara’s touch just so.

“This is my last sleep draught and I need to grab some ingredients. I figured you could keep me company, so I don’t get lost in the woods again.” And, also, because sometimes, when Kara’s feet got a little clumsy, Lena would grab her around the waist to hold her up and watch her with gentle eyes for a second to check she was steady, and Kara really wanted to be held gently today. She wanted to feel fragile and cared for. She wanted to feel it all from Lena.

“How did you get it to shimmer like that?” Lena asks, taking it from Kara’s hand with awed intrigue to shake it around a little.

“I went to one of the human craft stores.”

Lena looks at it inquisitively for another second and then laughs gently. “… it’s glitter?”

Kara nods, laughing. “Yeah. I figured I couldn’t make it taste any worse and they’ve been flying off the shelf. I brought loads if you want some?” She’d picked up every colour she could find, had been mix and matching them semi-manically all week. 

“Absolutely.” Lena grins. “But first, let’s go get you those herbs.” Lena takes her hand as she drags her outside like she was the one who suggested the walk.

She doesn’t let go in a startled haste like she normally does within the first minute. Kara’s half of the opinion that she’s using Kara to keep herself upright, the lack of sleep tugging on her limbs until her walk is a little clumsier than usual, a little sluggish, a little more earthen than ever before – like a little bead of the divinity Lena usually held had slipped away. She still takes Kara’s breath away.

“Thank you for coming with me. You’re always better at spotting things than I am,” Kara says and frankly she wonders if Lena knows that’s a lie too. That Kara always spotted everything a moment or two before Lena, but she never says a thing because she likes the excited gasp that Lena can never quite catch on its way out when they succeed in their goal. Like helping Kara with errands is the most important part of her day.

She doesn’t give Lena the chance to call it into question regardless. Instead, she distracts her with her favourite teasing follow up. “Must be that fancy education you got at that expensive private school with the posh little uniforms.”

Lena rolls her eyes at the segue, but her smirk says her reply is going to be worse for Kara than it is for her. “Always so focused on the little uniforms. Better be careful, Kara, or people will start to think you have a fetish.”

“I don’t- I don’t have a _fetish_ , Lena,” she whispers it like someone might here. All sharp and high and she doesn’t. She really doesn’t. But maybe just Lena in particular in a short skirt, not abiding by school regulation length in the slightest would be quite nice. Or like incredibly hot. Lena laughs at her and Kara weakly threatens, “I’ll put a curse on you.”

Lena shrugs carelessly. “Go ahead. Probably wouldn’t be a very good one considering your lack of fancy private education.”

“I don’t even know why I brought you with me, you’re worse than Alex sometimes.” Kara never thought she’d find a shit eating grin that so perfectly matched her sisters. She should’ve prepared harder just in case. “In fact, your Alex privileges have been revoked for a week until the two of you can learn to behave instead of ganging up on me.”

“I promise to be on my best behaviour for the rest of the walk.”

“It’s a start."

Lena smiles, squeezes Kara’s hand. “What’re we looking for anyway?”

“I mostly need some witch hazel.”

“My name’s Lena, not hazel. And that’s a funny way to ask for sex, Kara. We could’ve just stayed at my apartment.” Kara blushes as she laughs at the stupid joke. The kind of joke Lena only really made when she was about twenty minutes from falling asleep on her shoulder and dribbling slightly into the fabric of Kara’s shirt (though she’d never admit to dribbling and Kara would never call her out on it for fear Lena wouldn’t use her as a pillow again).

“Oh, you really are sleep deprived,” Kara says, endeared, pushing a lock of Lena’s hair from her forehead and running her thumb down the bridge of her nose just to watch her eyelids flutter.

“She says as she continues to drag me through the woods,” Lena says, looking down cautiously at the slick mud beneath their feet. “This is a recipe for disaster, you know- _oh!_ ”

Time really was a very funny thing. Or _timing_ really. Because it’s only when Lena starts to point out the precarity of the situation that her feet slip from beneath her and she takes Kara down with her.

Kara who lands on top of Lena with an “oof” and hands that barely manage to not land somewhere they shouldn’t in the whole ordeal. One of them helped by the fact that Lena’s still holding it where it lands, pinning Lena’s own to the mud above her head and maybe that wasn’t a place it should be either. Maybe that was a place that made Kara feel like she was thrumming with energy she didn’t know how to dispel, didn’t have the power to even attempt.

“My apartment would’ve been so much more convenient if you wanted to be on top of me Kara.”

Kara huffs, searching for solid ground with her feet. “You pulled me down.”

“Semantics,” Lena jokes, waving her free hand flippantly. She punctuates her argument with a dramatic yawn and a less pronounced, softer sorry because that was right in Kara’s face and holy Hecate she was adorable.

“I’m taking you home,” Kara decides, pulling her up and pointing her finger immediately in Lena’s direction. “No more jokes.” Not until she was well rested enough to mean them. Or actually back them up with actions. Lena mimes zipping her mouth closed and Kara can’t catch her chuckles at the sight of her - half asleep and coated in mud.

(Witch hazel could wait another day.

At least it was an excuse to hold Lena’s hand again).

* * *

There might come a time in Kara’s life where she develops the logic to stop thoughtlessly testing her own draughts on herself. Especially the more experimental ones. Especially the ones that could theoretically cause some problems if they didn’t work (or even if they did).

Today was not that day.

Today was the day that she finally decided she’d cracked the mind reading draught she’d been working on for months and then thoughtlessly took a sip to see if she was right. Everything was… not so thoughtless after that.

It was very _thought full_. Just full of thoughts. Not many of them her own. Did she not have many thoughts on a regular basis? Could she usually hear her own thoughts or was today different because she’d drank the potion? Did the woman passing her on the street really just cheat on her husband with his mum?

… maybe Kara should follow that thought train up a little bit.

No. That was intrusive. She was strictly leaving her apartment to beg Lena for help because she’d only designed the entire bottle to last an hour and a single drop had left her stepping outside her door, hearing something weird and walking back inside it for the past three hours already with no real signs of freedom in sight.

She couldn’t go to Alex. With the amount of weird sexual secrets she’d heard, she couldn’t risk going to Alex. And besides, Lena was closer. Lena’s shop was right next door. Lena was the smartest person she knew, and Kara could just run in, quickly blurt out what she needed to, and Lena wouldn’t have a chance to think anything else that Kara could accidentally intrude on.

“Lena I-“

_Fuck. Do your arms always look like that?_

Kara looks down at them timidly. What if they weren’t there and she’d opened the door with her mind and not her hands? She really needed to stop tasting things. She looks down, they’re still there. They seemed normal enough. No sleeves, a little tan, looking pretty good if she did say so herself. She flexes reflexively. There’s a whimper. _A whimper?_

_She’s going to kill me_.

“I’d never kill you, Lena.”

_Did she just-_ “Kara, I didn’t say that out loud.”

“No and that’s my problem. I need you to help me.”

“How long have you been-“ _Could she hear my thoughts at movie night last week? When she was sitting on her kitchen counter and I was just thinking about how much I wanted to ea-_

“No, I couldn’t, and if you’d like that thought to stay private, you should stop thinking it right now.” Lena takes a second to steady herself. Closes her eyes. Visibly shakes her head a little like it’ll throw the thoughts out her ear, as far away from Kara as possible.

“Right. Of course-” Lena clears her throat- “So, just to check, this is a today problem only? You didn’t have this, say… yesterday?” There’s a flash of an image. _Lena’s neck stretched. Her back arched. A moan that makes Kara feel like she might pass out a little bit. A flash of blonde hair and a muscular back and long fingers and-_

“Nope. Just today. All today. Everything else is fine and sacred and yours so let’s please focus on today and helping me not hear people’s thoughts please.”

“Right. Yes.” Lena pauses. Focuses. Breathes. “Go in the back for a moment while I close up. I think I have something that may help.” Kara follows the order quickly. She focuses on listening to actual words as Lena rushes through helping one last customer that strolls in as she attempting to flip the sign, until Lena’s shadow takes one last pause at the door as Kara hears her mantra.

_Clean thoughts. No thoughts. Head empty._

She steps into the room in the next second. The furrow in her brow smoothing into something softer as she takes in Kara sitting on the table, just far enough back that she can swing her legs comfortably without her feet hitting the floor.

“First, congratulations on finally managing to make one. And second-“ she hits Kara round the head.

“Ow!”

“Well, if you have no regard for your well-being, why should I?” It’s a little hypocritical. A _lot_ hypocritical honestly. But Lena also looks insanely pretty when she’s a little mad with her arms crossed over her chest and her brow a little furrowed with worry and irritation.

“I got excited,” Kara defends.

Lena sighs, deflating like she knows she doesn’t really have a leg to stand on, like she knows the feeling of finally figuring something out and not having the patience, or sense in the moment to do anything but see what might happen next. “Come to me first next time.”

“Technically you are the first person I came to.”

“Technically you’re a dumbass.”

Kara grins. “Can you fix me?”

“I can fix this symptom, but I think you’re going to have to continue to live with the underlying condition I’m afraid,” Lena jokes. She turns away to grab a few things, mixing them together whilst muttering under her breath - a few incantations mixed in with her bemoaning Kara’s recklessness. Kara finds she can’t be very insulted when they’re said in Lena’s breathy, distracted tone.

“Thank you for helping me,” Kara says somewhere in the middle of Lena wondering out loud how she attached herself to such a stupid, pretty friend and staring at Kara like maybe she hadn’t actually said that thought out loud and was angry at Kara for something she couldn’t help.

“Drink this,” Lena responds and it’s both a testament to the trust built in their friendship and Kara’s complete disregard for any kind of self-preservation that she downs it without any further questions.

There’s silence for a second. Kara bounces a little in her seat, grinning wildly at Lena who still looks a little worried but who smiles in return in a way that makes Kara’s heart flip like a chocolate frog - trying to spend its one good jump flinging itself out of her ribcage and into Lena’s waiting hands.

“Think something!”

_I’m in l-_

The last of Lena’s mind disappears and suddenly Kara’s itching to drink more to know how that sentence ends. But it wasn’t one Lena intended for her to hear. And Kara didn’t want to steal anymore from her than she already had. She wanted to hear every thought Lena ever had freely given.

There’s a moment of stillness in the thoughtless space where Lena stares at her, her cheeks flushed, her breath half caught on a question and Kara realising Lena doesn’t know what’s going on in her head as much as she now doesn’t know what’s going on in hers. Back to normal she supposed.

She smiles. Reaching out to gently touch Lena’s hand. The one pressing into her chest as it tries to coerce her heart to follow the beat it taps out. “You’re amazing,” she says earnestly. “Now I can finally do my grocery shopping without hearing that Agatha thinks Marvin is just absolutely strapping and that she wants him to-“

“No. Stop there,” Lena interrupts. “That’s a burden you have to carry alone.”

“But, Lena, she-“

Lena puts her hand up in front of Kara’s face effectively silencing her. “Consider it penance.”

“You’re cruel.”

“And you’re buying me bubble tea. Let’s go.” Kara feigns annoyance at the demand but follows willingly along anyway. Truthfully, she’d spend every penny in her bank if it meant she could be next to Lena for a little longer. Watching her, listening to her, deciphering every word and action and breath in an attempt to read her mind the right way, to see if there was a paragraph dedicated to Kara like there was an entire chapter in Kara’s mind dedicated to her.

(Who was she kidding?

Lena filled the whole damn book).

* * *

Kara’s checking inventory when Alex bursts through her door slightly out of breath and looking a lot like she’s out of time. “We have a code blue.”

“Mary accidentally turned herself into a lynx and forgot how to change back again?”

“No that’s a code cyan.”

“Cyan is blue,” Kara points out, marking a number down on her sheet as Alex huffs at her in a wordless attempt to get Kara to actually take this seriously.

“Cyan is cyan and we ran out of colours for problems in this town a long time ago and had to start improvising.” Honestly, it was saying something that Kara was probably only the fourth most problem-causing person around. Hell, she was probably only the fourth most on the street.

Apparently extreme magical power, insane curiosity and belief that everything would probably work out in the end anyway weren’t the best of mixes (especially when Alex and her codes were the only real reason things didn’t fall apart on a daily basis).

Kara graciously turns her full attention to Alex. “So, a code blue is?”

“Witch hunter.”

“Got it,” she nods. “I’m a baker who secretly deals drugs out the back of the shop, making people hallucinate that I’m a witch.”

Alex sighs, though a glimpse of a smile peeks out past the eye roll clouds she throws up. “Why do you insist on weird backstories?”

“It makes it feel like more of a game and less like some psychotic killer with a bag full of murderous tricks is trying to kill us to gain favours amongst their cult.”

Alex pauses, before nodding. “Fair enough.” The she smirks, oddly jovial despite the way her back refuses to be turned to the door and her eyes dart every angle at once trying to ensure they’re not going to be attacked. “I haven’t told Lena yet.”

“You haven’t told Lena yet?” Kara practically shouts. “Alex, you know she’s the most vulnerable!”

Alex scoffs. “Kara, that girl rivals you in untapped and barely restrained power.” That wasn’t the point. It didn’t matter that sometimes Lena’s skin literally sparked or that she glowed a little in the moonlight in a way that wasn’t even remotely metaphorical or that Kara could see the way she had to physically hold back when doing spells just to make sure she didn’t give too much.

The point was that Lena had spent most of her life in danger, had spent far too much time having danger run its greedy, undeserving little paws over her. “Maybe so but she also rivals me in having the biggest jerk for a sibling.”

“So, I’m Lex Luthor for allowing you the kindness of an early excuse to see your girlfriend.”

“I don’t need an excuse to go see Lena-“ Kara realises her mistakes when Alex laughs. “And she’s not my girlfriend. We’re friends.”

“Friends who hold hands on romantic walks and constantly joke about having sex with each other,” Alex counters.

“Exactly – best friends.”

“You really need to make another friend as a point of reference for what is normal and what is two people desperately wanting to bone and being too afraid to say it in case the other person says no.”

Kara tuts. “Why bone?”

“Well, I think it comes from the fact that you take your bones and you put them-“

“Not what I was asking!” Kara shouts. Clearing her throat before continuing to ask, “Watch the shop while I warn Lena?”

“Of course. How much do you sell the weed in the back for by the way?”

“A flash of boob.”

“Incredible business acumen.” Kara puts her middle finger up, laughing.

She feels the cold in the air the second she steps her foot outside, before she even sees him. The jagged scar running the length of his face, the way it smoked ever so slightly, the remnants of magic charging through the mark. Imperceptible to the normal human eye.

Kara trains her face to make it look like its imperceptible to her too. Like she can’t feel the thrum of a Witches’ Bane blade strapped inside the man’s coat. Like she isn’t thinking he’s a hypocrite for carrying a magical item and condemning magic in the same step. Like she isn’t even a little bit worried about the way his eyes linger on some of the people on the street.

Magic mixed with the mundane.

But they’re prepared. They’re always prepared. So, Kara smiles at him politely and steps into Lena’s shop, holding the door open behind her when he makes to follow. Just their luck. She knows Lena knows exactly what’s going on the second their eyes meet, the moment the door clicks into place.

Kara keeps walking closer. “Hi, love,” she greets. Steps in and presses her lips to Lena’s cheek - smooth and soft and warm. Lena’s breath catches a little at the touch. She should do that more. Under less horrible circumstances of course. She drops her voice to a whisper, “Is there anything you need hidden?”

Lena giggles. Honest to Hecate, giggles and presses her lips to the shell of Kara’s ear. Kara shivers, glad she can pretend that’s part of the act too. “Everything in here is enchanted. Including me.” Kara’s shoulders drop. She squeezes Lena’s hip in thankful relief.

“Sorry to interrupt ladies.” Kara pulls away but leaves her arm wrapped around Lena’s waist. They smile in perfect practiced tandem.

“Oh, no, that was my bad. I haven’t seen my girlfriend all day and I was feeling a little needy,” Kara lies smoothly. Lena leans into her side a touch further, looking at her softly before stepping closer to the counter where the man stands.

“How can I help you, sir? Looking for a new scent for your special someone?” So that’s what Lena’s enchanted it to look like? A perfume store. Kara usually went for bakery. She liked the excuse to have pastries around. She wonders what Lena looks like with the glamour on considering its definitely not her usual beautiful self.

Her usual beautiful self that is clearly present on the picture being slid across the wood. A little younger, a little less guarded in the eyes, but no less Lena. “It’s actually the someone special I’m looking for.”

“A lost love? That’s so romantic,” Kara says. Lena stamps on her foot where it can’t be seen. She bites her cheeks to hold her grin.

The man smiles ruefully at Kara’s fake wistful awe. She was really great at fake wistful awe. “Not quite, sweetheart. I’m a private investigator – see she went missing a few years ago and her brother is desperate to find her. A source told me they thought they saw her round the town a few times.”

“I can’t say I’ve ever seen her personally. But we do get a lot of tourists around these parts – they come for Kara’s pastries. They’re just out of this world.” Lena turns her grin to Kara who shrugs her shoulders bashfully.

“It’s all about the Madagascan vanilla,” she whispers like it’s a secret. She can practically feel the tension in the man’s body as he holds back an eyeroll, clearly becoming less charmed by their performance by the minute. He sighs audibly.

“Perhaps you could contact me if she does happen to stop by for some of those excellent pastries?” He asks, slipping a card from his pocket and offering it to them. Lena takes it without a single shake in her hand. Kara doesn’t think she could have done the same.

He smiles at them one last time as he turns. He doesn’t make a single step before his neck snaps at an odd angle and his body crumples to the floor, revealing a figure standing in Lena’s doorway.

Alex, face grave but determined. “People like him never give up.”

She clicks her fingers, and his body vanishes, but her words don’t. They haunt Kara all night.

_People like him never give up_.

* * *

“Remind me why we’re summoning a demon?” Lena questions but it doesn’t stop her from placing items in Kara’s waiting hands as she kneels on the floor, making sure she’s completing the sigil correctly. She’d rather not summon the wrong demon again. That was pretty awkward.

“I lost the lemon cake recipe she gave me and it’s Alex’s favourite.” Arguably because it was entirely fool proof and thus the only birthday cake Kara had managed to make perfectly over the years. Just a sprinkle of deal with a demon could make any crumb extra moist.

“Cake?” Lena asks dubiously. “We’re summoning an elder demon to ask about cake?” She repeats more fully like it’ll make Kara scoff and correct the sentence into something more normal but frankly she was right on the money with that one. The lesser demons weren’t so gifted with baked goods.

“First of all, her name is Lilith, and second, yes-“ Kara takes a steadying breath and then quickly rushes to add- “I also plan to ask her about Lex.”

“Kara…” Lena warns.

Kara lifts her hands up placatingly. “I’m not going to sell my soul or anything, don’t worry. Lilith doesn’t trade in that so much anymore – apparently the sixteen-hundreds were a very lucrative time for her. Now it’s just information for information.” Sometimes Kara thought Lilith just liked the company, their trades often heavily leaning in Kara’s favour.

“And what information do you have that would interest an elder demon?”

“The answer to who keeps opening portals into her dimension.”

“How do _you_ know that?”

“People love to spill their secrets to this smile.” Kara looks up to Lena to offer it in full. It had gotten her both in, and out, of a lot of trouble over the years. Alex once told her it worked because she was pretty. Kara disagreed. The smile worked because it was genuine – genuine care, and curiosity, and interest. The kind of smile that asked about your day and wanted a paragraph in response, not just a brushed off _it was okay_. The kind of smile that remembered your favourite cake, and your bland middle name, and the fact that you were sneaking into private demon realms without permission.

(Kara felt a little bad that she was going to snitch.

Not enough to not trade the information in favour of Lena).

“It is very disarming,” Lena allows, handing Kara the last component in her hands.

“And yet you still have more secrets than most,” Kara points out. She’s not sure it’s entirely true. It’s more that Kara’s aware of the places where secrets lie in Lena’s life, marks them out on the map in her mind as places she hopes to visit one day. She’s never been so interested to know everything about someone else before - learn their back roads, and hidden tunnels, and worldly wonders.

Lena watches her softly. “Less with you than anyone else I’ve ever met.”

“I’ll take it.” Kara smiles, draws one last symbol and watches as Lilith flashes in front of their eyes. The abruptness of her appearance fades quickly to a languidness in her form. A neck coloured in light red skin stretches and clicks, long fingers dance across the curled horns on her head, her chest expands in the tight black bodice encasing it – one deep, long breath.

Her arms spread grandly as a chaise longue appears out of nowhere and she drapes herself back onto it dramatically. It’s not until her grand display is finished that yellow, slitted eyes fall onto them and her mouth spreads to show sharply pointed incisors in a wide smile.

She moans. “Oh, how I love earthen air. There’s something so dirty about it.”

“Probably all the pollution they refuse to fix,” Lena quips. Lilith’s eyes dart to her dangerously - and by dangerously Kara means excitedly, and far too interested, and oh so dangerously ready to ruin Kara’s entire life for a mere few minutes of amusement.

“Lena Luthor. It’s nice to finally make your acquaintance.” She extends her hand, dainty but marked with the passage of time and the violence she’d filled it with. “Kara’s told me so much about you.”

“She has?” Lena’s brow furrows but she meets the hand with a firm shake.

“Oh yes, she never shuts up about you actually. It gets a little annoying during Poker Night but-“

“You guys have Poker Night?” Lena aims her confusion at Kara now. So maybe it was a little weird how much she hung out with a demon who could easily snap her neck if Kara happened to win too many hands in a row. But, like she said, Lilith seemed lonely and, for the longest time in her life, Kara had felt a little lonely too. Even with everyone around her.

“Kara’s the only person I’ve ever met able to beat me and I do like a challenge.” Lilith’s eyes dart to Kara mischievously. Maybe Kara should just smudge the circle now before this got any worse? They could cut their losses. “You should come next time. She constantly mentions how good you are at everything. Maybe you could finally be the one to convince her strip poker is a good idea.”

“I-“

“I think we should focus here,” Kara interrupts, halting both the words in Lena’s mouth and the images in her own head. “Only so many hours left to make the perfect cake.”

Lilith chuckles. Twists her fingers until a sheet of paper flashes into her hand. “Your recipe as promised.” Kara takes it gratefully. “Can I assist you in any other way today?”

“What do you know about Lex?” Lilith’s eyes flick interestedly between the two of them for a moment, lingering on Lena before they land on Kara in a final decision.

“I know he’s a very sick individual with more power than he has any business having – which makes sense considering he stole it all from other people.” She looks to Lena with sympathy. “I imagine his jealousy made for a very questionable childhood, especially with the power coursing through your veins, young one. Frankly, I’m surprised he let you live this long knowing what you’re holding back.”

“I’m a very good actress.”

Lilith hums. “I might have heard a rumour about his whereabouts.”

“A whereabouts you’d tell me if I told you its Psi who keeps portaling into your realm to canoodle with Imra?” Personally, Kara thought it was quite cute, how cold and aloof Psi always acted until Imra came into the picture. She was kind of rooting for them. She thinks by Lilith’s resigned sigh, she might be too.

“I really wish you’d just say fuck, Kara. Canoodle is so very uncouth.” Kara rolls her eyes as Lena laughs at Lilith’s grin. “Last I heard, the world’s best brother was in Blüdhaven but, if I were a gambling woman, which I am, I would say his next stop would be Argo.”

“Why Argo?” Lena asks.

Lilith waves her hand carelessly. “You can ask Kara all about that. She’ll be far more help than I considering she was born there. _The Babe from the Leylines_ – she’s practically a myth.”

“You can be surprisingly loose lipped sometimes, Lilith,” Kara bemoans.

“I have to entertain myself somehow, dear.” It’s Kara who hums this time, knocking her toe over the line so Lilith flickers away, taking her amused smirk along with her.

“What on earth is the ‘ _Babe from the Leylines’_?”

Kara sighs, walking over to place her hand on the one mismatched brick on the wall of the backroom, until it shifts, until more shift. And more. And a couple more. Until a doorway stands before them. “Come on then, I suppose it’s about time you learned the rest of my tragic backstory.”

Kara steps inside. Lena follows along obediently, trustfully, like Kara wasn’t friends with a demon that was responsible for the deaths of thousands, like nothing Kara could say about her past would make her think of her any differently, would make her look at her with any less devotion.

She leads Lena past mismatched items and curiosities to a tome that sits in the back of the room. Ancient. Dust gathering on every inch even as Kara cleans it nervously every day. She picks it up and nervously offers it towards Lena.

Lena stares at it without opening. “You’re being oddly secretive for a woman who asked me to watch her shop the first day we met because she was going to pee herself.”

“That book is about me,” Kara offers.

Lena chuckles as she turns it back and forth in her hands, eyeing the fraying seams and fading lettering – it looks more like ‘ _Bae o th lylns’_ these days but the sight still makes Kara pause. “Kara this book is the oldest thing I’ve ever seen, and I’m including Agatha in the wand shop in that.”

Kara cracks a smile at that. “They didn’t exactly know it was me when they were writing about it. Back then it was more… the concept of me.”

“The Babe of the Leylines?”

“That’s what they called me, yeah.” She wished they’d bothered to think of something cooler before they started writing. “An entity prophesised to burst out of the congruent point between Argo and Kandor capable of immense feats.”

“You’re definitely capable of immense feasts. I’ve never seen anyone eat as much as you.” Kara laughs at the dumb joke, at Lena’s attempt to calm her down even when Kara’s already desperately pretending to be calm, at the physical evidence of too much time spent with Kara, picking up her stupid sense of humour. “So, Lex going to Argo is about looking for you?”

“The power being held in a body - _my body_ \- is only one rumour. The people tasked to watch me, should I ever emerge, did everything in their power to perpetuate a different myth to spread to the masses. There have been excavation sites there for years trying to figure it out, trying to dig far enough down to strike gold, so to speak."

It had been Eliza who found her in the rubble. Eliza shrouded in white robes and so much gentle care for the baby who had no idea the magnitude of her birth. Eliza, and later Alex, who were the only two who knew her true identity. Not even the rest of The Order had been privy to such information. They knew she was alive, knew she walked amongst them, but never that it was Kara - Eliza’s clumsy little Kara who they used to sneak chocolate to in meetings.

They decided she deserved a normal life and a normal life she was given. Spectacular, and light, and loved but normal all the same. She was lucky.

“But you’re here, actively searching for my brother who apparently, given the chance, would slice you open and try to steal your power for himself?” Lena asks, or demands an answer really. Her words growing angrier with each one she speaks.

“He’s looking for you anyway,” Kara attempts to placate.

“Exactly. _Me_. Not you.”

“Well, I like to think of us as a ‘we’. As in, we can get to him first before he tries to kill one of us in order to have enough power to kill the other?” The circumstances were a little bleak, but she was pretty sure they could handle it between them.

“And what are we going to do when we ‘get to him’ Kara? You won’t even kill a fly,” Lena shouts.

“Because flies have done nothing wrong. But Lex…” Kara takes a slow, steady breath. In. Hold. Out. “I know I don’t ask about it too much because I can tell that you don’t want to talk about it, but I’ve seen it, Lena. The marks on your skin, the slight fading edges of your power where I know he tried to take too much before you realised you could say no. The way you flinch when I startle you or tense when someone is a little too loud. The way you shy away from touch-”

“Not yours,” Lena combats quietly.

“Not mine.” _Thankfully._ “He deserves to pay.”

Lena stares into her eyes for a long while, desperately searching, frantically digging, gently wading into the depths. Kara stares back, waits for her to decide. She would always let Lena decide when it came to this. Lena finally speaks, “We can’t become him.”

“We won’t. The Order, they have a containment unit for if I should ever lose control.” It had almost happened once. Kara felt herself slipping. Darkness curled around the edges of her vision like she was dropping to the bottom on an unexplored ocean, falling into depths she wouldn’t have the strength to swim back out of.

Alex had always likened it to a tap. The metaphor had never felt so apt until that moment. As the power swelled and swelled and swelled like she’d forgotten to twist the faucet and it was leaking from the sink, flooding the floors of her house, wetting the cobblestones outside. Kara sat in the unit for a week afterwards. Alex sat with her the whole time.

Kara continues, “It could hold Lex without issue and then all it takes is one little ritual and he’s back to being as powerless as the day he was born, with no memory that things like this ever existed.”

“I admire your optimism.”

“Well, you can admire my pretty smile when it works out.”

Lena twists her lips. “So, you want to go looking for him?”

Kara shakes her head. “He’ll soon realise Argo is nothing but empty ruins and it’s always better to have a home turf advantage right? I say we make him come here.”

“He’s not stupid enough to fall for a trap.”

“Just because you know something is a trap doesn’t mean you won’t still be interested enough to go and fall into the trap on the way.” That was on galaxy brain thinking. Lena seems less impressed by her higher order deduction.

“Now your optimism is just reckless.”

“And your pessimism is oddly attractive,” Kara jokes. Only Lena doesn’t let it land as one. Her eyes dart. Her hands clench, unclench, clench again. And then she takes one step closer.

They were already close. Kara sought the steady comfort of Lena as much as Lena sought the warmth of Kara when they’re together – Kara knows why on her side; she’d always hoped about Lena.

She doesn’t have to just hope now as Lena takes one deep breath, gently takes Kara’s face in her hands and kisses her.

It’s amazing. It’s great. It’s everything Kara’s ever wanted and nothing like she always thought it would be. She figured one day she might do something dumb and Lena would laugh into her lips. She figured one day Lena would say something inherently soft whilst pretending to be sharp and Kara would paint her grin onto her mouth. She thought it would be timid. She thought it would be a cautious introduction. A testing of the boundary.

Instead, Lena kisses her like it’s the last chance she’ll get. Instead, Lena kisses her like she’s pulling every ounce of love from Kara’s mouth to store for later, to give her a little sunshine on a rainy day. Instead, it’s desperate and wanton and filled with abandon and Kara feels a prick of worry beneath her desire, beneath her joy, beneath her relief.

She pulls back.

A thousand questions on her lips. And one. “Lena, what-“

“Do you want this?” Lena asks, neither of them have pulled back truly. The heat of her words trails along Kara’s jaw like fog on a quiet dawn – that moment before life really falls back into place.

Kara steps into the unseen. “Only since I first saw you.”

“Then let’s have it.” Lena leans forward, Kara holds steady for one last moment, aware that once she capsizes she won’t have the strength to right the boat again.

“Are you sure?”

“I’ve never been surer about anything than I am about you.”

“You’re not just-“

“I want you-“ Lena cuts in- “I’ve wanted you for a long time. This is about you and me.” Kara looks at her for a moment. The look in her eyes. Frantic and needy and what she wants to call love. Kara lets herself believe it. She needs to believe it.

“Okay.”

She kisses her again.

She falls into Lena’s mouth and hands and body. She pulls Lena apart and puts her back together. She pushes and pushes and pushes herself closer until she can trick herself into thinking they’re one entity, not two halves of a whole, just whole, without seams, without breaks, without secrets.

(Kara falls asleep with love in her arms.

She wakes up cold and alone).

* * *

“Lena’s gone,” she says the second Alex has given into her incessant knocking, barrelling through the door into her apartment like so many times before. And yet, like no time before at all. She’s never felt so jittery, so panicked, so much like she’s about to have to look Death in the eye and beg her to give her back what she took.

“She’s probably hiding because she couldn’t find a good present for my birthday.”

“No. We spoke to Lilith last night and now she’s _gone_.”

Alex sobers up, already grabbing supplies, spreading them on the floor. “Where?”

“Argo.”

“You know it’s a risk you going there.” It’s not really a question. Kara answers it like one anyway.

“I know. But it’s Lena.”

Alex nods, draws one last sigil. “Get in then.” Kara steps in as Alex slams her hand onto the ground and then there’s no ground at all. Just a swirling feeling in her stomach and an odd awareness that in that moment she doesn’t really have a stomach at all. It used to make Kara feel sick, travelling this way, but she already feels sick now. She doesn’t think it could get much worse than the panic swarming in her stomach right now.

“Where should we-“ _Start? Go? Stop the worst thing in her life from happening?_

Alex points across the rubble. “Probably the huge black energy beacon in the sky.”

Kara starts running. It’s not so hard to spot the ritual. The black hooded figures encircling a man whose aura of danger comes nothing from his frail form but from the manic look in his eyes as he circles round the body on the alter. Not a body. A person. Her person. Her Lena.

Kara sprints and sprints until she can see the blood trickling down Lena’s face. The light that thrums beneath her skin – her skin that looks almost translucent, like maybe it wasn’t there to contain the light at all, like maybe she was nothing but pure power holding itself in humanoid form.

It’s the most alive and dead she’s ever looked. Kara had never put much stock in the rumour that Lena’s father romanced Death herself until that moment, until Lena looked like she’d always had one foot in the living and one in the dead.

Kara runs until she feels like she can’t breathe, until she’s skidding to a halt at the circle and then bursting. With rage, with power, with a scream she’d been holding in since the second she found herself alone in her bed.

Alex will tell it later like she was a god sent down from heaven. Electricity at her fingertips, fire at the feet, the wind in her lungs and the earth bending to her will. Alex will tell it later like an explosion.

All Kara sees is white. Blinding white. And then a scattering of bodies crumpled on the floor. And one. Her one. Breathing but barely.

She plies her with every kind of healing magic she can think of. Silently holds her in her arms as Alex portals them home and presses more into her chest that sprung to mind over the journey. She pulls bottles and bottles from her shelves, drags unused relics from secret rooms and begs them to do what all the rumours claimed they could.

She puts Lena gently in her bed when she’s ran out of ideas, the same bed she’d stupidly snuck out of, and waits. She sits on top of the covers beside her. Sat up against the headboard, arms crossed, staring at the wall. She doesn’t know how long she waits. Long enough that when she hears a shuffle, she refuses to look, having looked excitedly too many times before and found Lena still blank. She can’t do it again.

“Kara?”

Kara’s can’t quite catch the sob that bursts from her mouth. She surprises herself when she manages to speak tear-stained words. “Did you forget we’re a we?”

She doesn’t turn to Lena until a soft hand guides her chin. “I didn’t want you to get hurt.” Kara laughs humourlessly at the earnestness in Lena’s words, in the genuine hope in her eyes that Kara will understand the feeling, in the tremble in her hand like Kara might not, might turn away.

Kara presses into her warmth instead – attempts to soak it up like a cat lounging in last golden stream of sunlight trickling through the window in the afternoon.

“I’d rather have the hurt of his hands, than the hurt of losing you.” Kara could survive a bruise. She doesn’t think she could survive seeing Lena like that again, knowing that Lena had walked into that place ready to die, ready to give herself up in favour of someone else, everyone else. The failsafe Kara had discovered enchanted into her blood would’ve made sure of that – that when she died, Lex died right alongside her (and a little piece of Kara’s soul just after). “Please note that for the future.”

“I’ll be sure to write it down when I can feel my arms,” Lena jokes and Kara allows herself a small smile finally. One carved out of relief, and joy, and contentment that she finally got to have this moment.

This moment where Lena lazily woke up beside her – all fluttering lashes, and soft looks, and sleep coated syllables. This moment that Kara couldn’t stop the little voice in the back of her head from questioning repeatedly. This moment that she might well ruin if she asks what she wants to ask but sometimes a want is really a need and Kara really needs to know.

“I’m going to ask a question and I need you to know that I don’t think you’re capable of it, but I really just need to be sure that-“

“It was real-“ Lena interrupts- “Kissing you. Making love to you. It was real. It was selfish but it was definitely real. I just- I needed to know before I did something stupid.”

“I’m glad you know it was stupid-“ Kara grins- “and I’m glad to know you call it making love.”

Lena groans, ignoring the obvious pain in her ribs to turn her body away from Kara and half hide her face in the pillow. “Oh Hecate, Kara, what did you want me to say? I wanted to know what it would be like to be railed by you before I risked my life?”

Kara laughs, her chest easing with each chuckle as she convinces Lena to roll back over, stays leaning on her elbow beside her, watching carefully until Lena meets her eyes. “No making love was nice; it was cute, and it was. Love that is. As in, I love you.” Not the way she’d always planned on finally saying it but-

Who was she kidding? She never had a plan. Just way too many emotions and not enough healthy strategies to figure out how to express them.

“I love you too. I’m sorry I made you doubt that.” Lena smacks her lips. “What did you give me?”

Kara thinks about the litany of bottles scattered about her shop. “A little of everything.”

“What’s everything?”

“The stuff I had ready to go in the moment… including the one’s with glitter in them.”

“I’m going to be coughing it up for a week,” Lena moans.

Kara shrugs in a manner she hopes accurately portrays ‘serves you right for risking your life without me by your side to help’ or something adjacent. “Your tongue looks very pretty though.”

“You should give it the compliment in person really,” Lena tests. Kara gives in to the request despite the laughter coating her own tongue.

(It’s worth the second and third round of flossing just to get all the glitter out.

Lena would always be worth it).

* * *

_“Good afternoon, Mr Turner,” Kara says unthinkingly. And then very thinkingly about the blood stain she cleaned up just yesterday, “Mr Turner?” Mrs Turner at least has the decency to look a little ashamed by his side._

_She sighs._

_Lena was so paying for lunch._


End file.
